Friday, January 8, 2016

Partial Christmas Gift From Max

I have made a lot of friends in this hobby, from the day in October 2006 when I started helping out at the former card shop in Winston-Salem, to when I started this blog in November 2008 to when I joined the Instagram card community in November of 2013.  One of the friends that count among the best of the best is my good friend, Max.  He and I have been trading for a long time now, and hung out at the National this past summer.  We text and skype almost every day.  He is an amazing person, whom I can't imagine being without.

Max sent me what he says was half of my Christmas gift.  The above Fergie Jenkis ball was something he picked up in person about a month ago for me, so I used it as an opportunity to upgrade the ball that I had.  Mine was one of my original TTM successes, but was on a China ball with a bad pen, so it has faded quite a bit.

This one looks so much better and is on an OMLB ball.  Definitely an upgrade!
Max knew someone who was doing some "graphing" recently, and was able to take every Bob Milacki card that I could find and turned them into autos.  Max and I 50/50'ed the cards and here are a few of the notable ones.

I love 1989 Topps's design, so I had to show this one.  It looks really cool signed.  I need to get myself into more TTMs on cards, because I feel like TTM autos give some of the 80s-90s cards new life, so to speak.
Speaking of 80s-90s cards, here is a nice signed 1989 Donruss, followed by the below 1990 Donruss.
In all, Max sent me 9 Milacki signed cards.  Not bad at all!  I'm really happy with them, and they will go into my TTM binder.
Max also included some signed cards by other former Orioles.  This 2012 Robert Andino is a nice one.
I was surprised last year to see that Adam Loewen popped back up in the majors in the Phillies pitching staff.  I guess his left arm is feeling better now after taking a few years off from pitching and playing as a position player.
Finally, this really cool Xavier Avery auto on a 2012 Topps.  Avery is back with the Orioles as a minor league signing.  He will try to break camp with the O's in Spring Training.  I feel like he is outfield depth at AAA, but not a bad deal on a milb contract.

So, thank you so much for the awesome package, Max.  As always, I appreciate it!

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